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Subject:
From:
Mason Gaffney <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:41:23 -0400
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C.R. Braun writes that "Mints has been labelled a Keynesian by Austrian
economists."

The idea that liquidity is important, associated with the "commercial loan
theory," aka the "real bills doctrine", has been around at least since the
South Sea Bubble of 1720.  In England, it is called the "banking school"
position.  An early and eloquent advocate was Adam Smith, in The Wealth of
Nations.

Many today dismiss it, citing the studies of Lloyd Mints.  Adam Smith is too
regulation-minded for Chicago, the arbitrator of modern market orthodoxy.
Chicago orthodoxy, articulated by Milton Friedman, brooks no twilight shadow
of qualitative control on bank lending.

Ironically, this view has let banks run wild with long term loans
collateralized by bubbles in the land market, as in the 1920's and our own
times. This has had the same effect as turning Keynes loose, but with a
different intellectual provenance. Extremes have met, as they often do; but
if some Austrian labeled Mints a "Keynesian", as Braun alleges, it was in a
fit of paranoia, or to make a debater's point. Let us see the quote, please,
and its source and context.

Mason Gaffney

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